Nowadays, fewer students raise their hands when asked if they want a career in education. / Photo illustration byJohn Terhune/Journal & Co

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Jessica Espy grades papers Wednesday at Harrison High School. Once she sought a master's degree in chemistry. Now she's teaching six freshman biology classes. She and her colleagues are feeling their way through the new evaluation process. 'As a new teacher, it's very overwhelming,' she says. / By John Terhune/Journal & Courier

ABOUT THIS SERIES

In April 2011, Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a law requiring all public school districts to implement annual teacher evaluations tied to teacher compensation. The 2012-13 school year is the first in which evaluations will be conducted. In this yearlong series, the J&C will follow two teachers through the evaluation process and check in monthly to see how things are changing in the classroom and how teachers and administrators are moving forward. To see past installments, go to jconline.com/evaluations.

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Melissa Colonis, a 21-year veteran of public education, can’t imagine being in any other line of work. But standing in line with her son at an Indiana University college fair last April, the Tecumseh Jr. High math teacher wondered whether today’s aspiring teachers feel similarly. Surrounded by a sea of tables, Colonis spotted a booth for the IU School of Education. It was like all the others with one noticeable difference: There was no line of students seeking more information.

“Not one person visited the table while I was standing there, and it must have been for 20 minutes,” Colonis said. “There were lines for the other schools, but this lady was just standing at this table.”

Out of the 2011 Indiana General Assembly session emerged a wave of education changes focused on increasing teacher and school accountability. Failing schools have made headlines in recent years and complicated education policy issues have been watered down in recent months into a chorus of political rhetoric.

“People don’t want to be a teacher because they either think teachers aren’t doing a good job, or they’re telling us what to do, or now they have all this pressure on them. I just feel it’s not very attractive,” Colonis said.

A Journal & Courier survey of teachers colleges across Indiana indicates that in fall 2012, applications received were at the lowest level in at least five years. According to the survey:

• At Purdue’s College of Education, enrollment has decreased 23 percent over the past five years. That’s in part due to a targeted effort to lower enrollment, but the drop has been deeper than anticipated or desired. Applications have dropped 42 percent since fall 2008.

• At IU’s School of Education, enrollment is down 11 percent from last year but has increased 4 percent overall in the past five years. Applications have dropped 20 percent since fall 2008.

• At Ball State’s Teachers College, the number of freshman indicating majors in education has decreased 44 percent since fall 2008; applications to the teachers college have decreased 32 percent in that same period.

Many factors contribute to those fluctuations, but higher education leaders fear that political polarization and the barrage of legislative changes enacted in K-12 education in recent years could be dampening the passion of aspiring educators.

“Our biggest critics are the ones who are making the most sweeping statements about failing schools, and they’re the very same ones saying what we need to do to improve schools in this country is attract the best and brightest,” said IU Dean of Education Gerardo Gonzales. “I don’t think they understand the decisions they’re making are having the reverse effect.”

'So many changes'

Julia Doan taught second grade for three years in Medina, Wash., before returning to her hometown of Frankfort. She was away from the classroom for eight years.

But this fall she’s teaching second grade at Burnett Creek Elementary.

“I keep making the reference I feel like ‘Encino Man,’ ” Doan said referring to the 1992 film in which a frozen caveman wakes up in modern-day Los Angeles. “I feel like I’ve been on ice for eight years. There are so many changes.”

Take, for example, newly required annual teacher evaluations — part of a coordinated education reform agenda championed by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels.

School districts this year adopted evaluation models that prompt teachers to identify their lowest-performing students and develop ways to help those students improve and gauge their progress.

In an interview with the Journal & Courier, Daniels said the system may not be perfect but that “over time we’ll learn the most accurate and most fair method” to evaluate teachers.

In mid-January, Daniels will become president of Purdue University, putting him in a prime position to see how such policies are affecting higher education. Daniels said this is an exciting time for colleges that want to lead the discussion on education reform.

“There’s an enormous opportunity for any college of education which chooses to excel in these areas,” Daniels said. “Think of all the great research waiting to be done. What is the most fair and accurate way to evaluate teacher performance? What are the best ways to reward or recognize that? For the school that decides to align with that, I think, there’s a huge opportunity waiting.”

Proponents say the evaluations will hold teachers more accountable, rooting out those who don’t belong in the profession and improving those who do. But the law has caused a host of problems for teachers colleges.

For one, education schools say fewer established teachers are willing to bring student teachers into their classrooms. At Purdue, IU and Ball State, deans have said they hear about teachers fearing how a student teacher might negatively impact their students’ learning and, in turn, the teacher’s evaluation rating. That’s because in the past many teachers worked with student teachers for a week or two before becoming more hands off, leaving the student teacher to learn, in part, from his or her mistakes.

The lack of student teaching opportunities prompted Purdue’s College of Education to scale back its admissions in recent years. But Dean Maryann Santos de Barona said the drop in enrollment has been larger than intended — which she attributes to “negative media attention surrounding the field of education” and legislative changes disincentivizing higher education.

“As a result, we have gradually dialed down the numbers admitted to our undergraduate teaching programs while developing high-quality graduate and undergraduate programming that does not require such placements,” Santos de Barona said.

A letter sent to superintendents last spring by the Indiana Department of Education didn’t help things, said John Jacobson, dean of education at Ball State. The letter cautioned teachers who were planning to accept student teachers to work closely with universities to ensure that the students do not negatively impact the teacher’s rating.

Ball State’s college had long been working on a new form of student teaching — called co-teaching. With co-teaching, Jacobson said, the load is shared between the established and student teachers. Purdue and IU are adopting similar models.

When local superintendents began expressing disinterest in accepting student teachers, Ball State outlined its new approach.

“That letter did have an impact initially,” Jacobson said. “Had we not been prepared to come back (with co-teaching), we would have many more schools saying we don’t want to take student teachers. That is a reality in the state.”

Educating teachers

The new evaluations also de-emphasize the link between advanced degrees and higher pay. In the past, teachers could stand to gain additional compensation by earning a master’s degree.

“New teacher evaluations now disallow, or at least discourage, the use of master’s degrees as a factor in teacher raises,” Gonzales said. “So here we are saying we need better educated teachers — and we’re passing legislation that discourages master’s degrees among teachers.”

During a recent campaign stop in Lafayette, Glenda Ritz, the Democratic candidate for state superintendent for public instruction, said the problem will be compounded if teacher licensing changes proposed this year by the Indiana Department of Education are enacted.

The move would alter the Rules for Educator Preparation and Accountability — or REPA — in part by allowing those with bachelor degrees in any field and with a 3.0 GPA to pass a content knowledge test in order to be a teacher. Among educators, the proposed changes are called “REPA II.”

“It’s just going to get worse,” Ritz said of the decline in applications to teaching schools. “We’re going to have unqualified people teaching our kids in Indiana. ... You wouldn’t even have to have a degree in the field of education to be a teacher.”

“Degrees and certifications do not guarantee student success,” Baker said. “So, our concern is with a teacher’s ability to drive student learning and growth.”

High-quality teachers, he said, can come from anywhere, including Transition to Teaching programs or Woodrow Wilson Fellowships that transplant workers in STEM fields into the classroom.

“Additionally, Indiana has not done away with the exams that ensure our teachers know their subjects well prior to stepping foot inside a classroom,” Baker said.

As far as student teaching opportunities are concerned, Baker said the onus is on colleges to produce good teaching candidates.

“If local school corporations are expressing concerns about the effectiveness of student teachers, this should be a call to action for the institutions preparing them,” Baker said.

Fulfillment in
the classroom

In spring 2011, as education reform barreled through the legislature and dominated headlines, Jessica Espy was pursuing a master’s degree in chemistry at Purdue. But tutoring fellow students sparked the desire for a different career path.

“My plan was always to teach at the college level, and I realized in college that was not what I wanted,” Espy said. “I wanted more interaction with the kids.”

She had a cursory awareness of the debate raging at the time in the Statehouse, but the uncertainty wasn’t enough to deter Espy. Flash forward two years; Espy is a first-year biology teacher at Harrison High School.

“People think I’m crazy because I could be making twice as much somewhere else,” Espy said. “But it’s not about the money for me.”

For Espy the long hours — “I wonder some nights should I just sleep here?” she jokes — are worth it, even though she and colleagues are feeling their way somewhat blindly through new time-consuming teacher evaluations.

“As a new teacher, it’s very overwhelming,” Espy said. “But this is where I belong.”

When Jacobson, the education dean, speaks to prospective teachers at Ball State, the dedication of those like Espy is what he emphasizes.

“I like to focus on the kind of self-fulfillment that comes from being a teacher,” he said. “The internal joy you feel as you touch each individual life in this classroom. That’s really the kind of teacher we want.”

Jacobson said teachers by and large are motivated not by money but by a desire to impact student lives. They’re not deterred by long hours or a lack of praise. Still, it’s disheartening, he said, when he asks how many students in a room are considering teaching and only a few hands go up.

“Teaching is not an easy profession,” Jacobson said. “Especially as you begin your teaching career.”

Moving forward

To compensate for the decline in applications, Indiana teachers colleges are stepping up their recruitment efforts.

Purdue’s College of Education is looking to hire its first full-time recruiter and launched the EXCITE summer camp designed to expose students to careers in teaching.

IU’s School of Education developed a direct admissions program to streamline the process and “intentionally put into effect deadlines and standards designed to accelerate rapid growth in enrollment,” Gonzales said.

Ball State’s Teachers College launched a study to determine how best to reach prospective students, including working with counselors, direct mailing or college interest fairs, and has tailored its curriculum to areas assessed by the state-designed RISE evaluation model.

In the meantime, only time will tell whether applications to Indiana teaching colleges will continue to drop or if the recent dip is temporary.

With any major change, “it always takes a few years to see how it plays out,” Jacobson said. “Sometimes there are unintended consequences. It could be a real positive, it could be a real negative. Who knows?”

Gonzales and Jacobson agree that policymakers, media and schools, both public and private, all play a role in attracting the state’s brightest to the field of education. The language and rhetoric about failing schools, they said, isn’t helping and risks demoralizing educators.

“I do think the environment for teachers, the rhetoric around teachers not being well-prepared or schools doing a poor job, just the general policy discussion around failing schools and so forth is part of the problem,” Gonzales said.

“I don’t think the policymakers or people proposing those changes know the instability that causes, how damaging that is.”

The governor doesn’t buy that. “We have to start with the truth: The system is not performing well,” Daniels said. “Education has to be about the success for the young people, first of all, and not anything about the adults. So to deny the plain facts because it might disturb someone I think would be a terrible disservice to young people.”

The changes and challenges of recent years, Daniels said, should excite teachers. “The teachers we’re going to see these days are drawn to that challenge,” Daniels said. “Anybody who wants to run from it, I respect their point of view, but they may not be the best suited.”